“Oh, sir, are you the doctor?” she exclaimed. “It’s just awful! Wear has been taken ill all of a sudden, and she is rolling on the floor and screaming dreadful, with the agony she’s in. The missis is too frightened to be beside her. But the governess is with her, and oh dear, doctor, do be quick!” “I’m not the doctor,” answered Mr. Cory quickly, “but I’ll fetch one directly. I was passing and heard the screams. Come along.” A moment later both men were hastening for a certain Doctor Mayne, whom they knew. He lived not far away, and from him they hoped to be able to hear a few after-details of the case. Fortunately he was at home, and set off at once. The doctor whom the servant had gone to seek had not been in when she arrived at his house, so Doctor Mayne was admitted to the patient at once. But the moment he looked at her he judged her case to be hopeless. Nor was he mistaken. Poor Wear was, as the housemaid had said, in mortal agony. An hour later she was dead. Annie, though she was tired and heartsick, was with her to the last, rendering what help she could, and wondering all the while if this terrible event could be the accident it was supposed to be. For the woman’s death at this juncture, with Hugh Stavanger’s secret still unbetrayed by her, was so strangely opportune an occurrence that less suspicious natures than Annie’s might easily suspect some of the Stavangers to have had a hand in it. Wear was known to be rather fond of an occasional drink of Hollands. On her box in her room was found a gin bottle, from which she had evidently been drinking. But the bottle contained no gin, but a deadly poison sometimes used for disinfecting purposes. How this happened to be in an unlabelled bottle, and how Wear happened to mistake it for gin, are mysteries which have never been elucidated, and never will be now. The dead woman can reveal neither of these secrets, nor that other one which was so important to the people in whose house she died. It was about eleven o’clock when this event occurred. Meanwhile our two watchers were in a great state of anxiety and suspense, which was not lessened when Doctor Mayne, surprised to see them there still when he left the house, told them that all was over. “Some time, Doctor Mayne, I will explain everything to you. At present my great anxiety is about my daughter.” “Why, is she ill?” “No, she is in that house. The woman who had just died an awful death knew a secret likely to cost young Stavanger his liberty and to liberate young Riddell, and the Stavangers were aware that she had them in her power. My daughter is there. She also knows their secret. Her life is no safer than Wear’s was. She shall stay no longer, lest she also be poisoned.”